Don't die, she meant. She rubbed her stomach, looked at him. Don't die.
PRESENT 22
Blake regained consciousness in darkness.
He lay still, realizing that he was no longer in his car. He was lying on something flat and hard-a carpeted floor, he thought after a moment. His head ached-seemed to pulsate with pain. And he was cold.
His discomfort kept him from realizing immediately that his hands and feet were bound. Even when he tried to rub his head and discovered he had to move both arms, he did not understand why at once. He thought there was something more wrong with his body. When, finally, he understood, he struggled, tried to free himself, tried to stand up. He
managed only to writhe around and sit up.
"Is anyone here?" he said. There was no answer.
He squinted, trying to penetrate the darkness, fearing that he might be blind. He remembered hitting his head as he sheared into the oncoming car. He probably had a concussion. And what else?
Finally, dizzily, he managed to turn around, see dim light outlining draperies. He could still see, then. "Thank God," he muttered.
"Dad?"
He started. "Rane?" he said. "Is that you?"
"It's me." She sounded half awake. "Are you okay?" "Fine," he lied. "Where the hell are we?"
"A ranch house. Another ranch house."
"Another . . . ?"
"It wasn't Eli's people, Dad. I mean, they were chasing us, too, but they didn't catch us. A car gang caught us." That took a moment to sink in. "Oh God."
"They think they can get a ransom for us. I made them look at your identification. Meanwhile, they've been exposed to the disease."
"If there was no break in their skins-"
"There was. I scratched one myself. He tore my shirt open and I tore some skin off his arm." That shook Blake from one kind of misery to another. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. A few bruises, that's all. Before anyone could rape me, they decided I might be worth more . . . intact." "And Keira?"
"They let her alone too. She's right here. She was awake for a while-said she felt awful. Said she'd left all her medicine at Eli's."
"Is she tied?" "We both are."
He tried to see them, thought he could see Rane sitting up.
"Shall I wake Keira?"
"Let her sleep. That's the only medicine she has left now. How long was I unconscious?"
"Since last night. But you weren't always unconscious. Every now and then you'd mumble and move around. And you threw up. They made me clean it with my hands still tied."
Concussion. And he had lost a day. He had also lost his freedom again. Worst of all, he had spread the disease. He had failed at all he had attempted. All. . . .
"There's going to be an epidemic," Rane whispered. Blake inched over toward her, groped for her.
"What are you doing?" "Give me your hands."
"Dad, we're not tied with ropes. That's probably why I can still feel my hands and feet. We're wearing cuffs-choke-
cuffs."
Blake lay down again heavily. "Shit," he muttered. Everything the car family did to hold them sealed its doom and increased the likelihood of an epidemic. He tested the cuffs, doing what he could first to slip them, then to pull their bands apart. They were plastic, but felt surprisingly soft and comfortable as long as he did not try to get rid of them. Once he began to struggle, however, they tightened until he thought they would cut off his hands.
Pain stopped him. And the moment he relaxed, the cuffs eased their grip. People could be left hobbled as he was indefinitely. Choke-cuffs were called humane restraints. Blake had heard that in prisons-inevitably overcrowded-order was sometimes maintained by the threat of hobbling with such humane restraints. Hobbled prisoners were not isolated.
They were left in with the general prison population-fair game. They frequently did not survive.
Lying on his back, helpless, eaten alive with frustration and fear, Blake knew how they must have felt.
Would it be possible to talk to the car family? Would there be even one member intelligent enough to understand the danger? And if there were one, what evidence could Blake show him? The bag was gone. Neither he nor the girls had symptoms yet. If Meda was right, there would be symptoms in a few days, but how far could a car family spread the disease in a few days?
"Is this their base?" he asked Rane. A true car family had no base, he knew, except their vehicles.
"This place isn't theirs," Rane said. "They took it. They killed the men and raped the women. I think they're still keeping some of the women alive somewhere else in the house."
Blake shook his head. "God, this is a sewer. There's only one source of help that I can think of-and I don't want to think of it."
"What? Who?" "Eli."
"Dad ... Oh no. His kind . . . they aren't people anymore."
"Neither are these, honey."
"But, please, I gave these all the information they needed to convince Grandmother and Granddad Maslin that we're prisoners. They'll ransom us."
"What makes you think people as degenerate as these will let us go after they get what they want?"
"But they said ... I mean, they haven't hurt us." She groped for reassurance. "Let's face it. Grandmother and Granddad would ransom us if we were alive at all-no matter what had been done to us, but the car people haven't done anything." Blake sat up, tried to see her in the darkness. "Rane, don't say that again. Not to anyone." If only she thought before she opened her mouth. If only she hadn't opened her mouth at all. If only no other listener had heard!
Unexpectedly, Keira spoke into the silence. "Dad? Are you there?"
Blake shifted from anger at Rane to concern for Keira. "We're both here. How do you feel?"
"Okay. No, lousy, really, but it doesn't matter. We were worried about you. You took so long to regain consciousness. But now that you're awake, and it's night . . . what would you think about one of us hopping over to one of those windows and signaling Eli's people?"
Silence.
"Rane wouldn't let me do it," Keira added.
Blake touched Rane. "So you had thought of it."
"Not me. I would never have thought of that. Keira did. Dad, please. Eli's people ... I couldn't stand to go back to them. I'd rather stay here."
"Why?" Blake asked. He thought he knew the answer, and he did not really want to hear her say it, but it needed to be said. She surprised him.
"I can't stand them," she said. "They're not human. Their children don't even look human. . . . Yet they're seductive. They could have pulled me in. That guy, Kaneshiro . . ."
"Did he hurt you?"
"You mean did he rape me? No! There'd be nothing seductive in that. Nobody raped me. But in a little while, a few days, he wouldn't have had to. I'm afraid of those people. I'm scared shitless of them."
"That's the way I feel about these car people!" Keira said. "Rane ... so what if you were sort of... seduced by Eli's people. I was, too. All it meant to me was that they weren't really bad people-not the way rat packs are bad. They're different and dangerous, but I'd rather be with them than here."
Blake began to inch across the room, making as little noise as possible. Hopping would have been too noisy.
"Dad, don't!" Rane begged.
He ignored her. If any of Eli's people were outside, he wanted them to know where he was. It was possible, of course, that they would simply shoot him, but he did not believe they would-they could have done that long ago. The Clay's Ark people wanted their captives-their converts-back. Perhaps by now they also wanted any salvageable members of